Day Zero

Three weeks ago, I became a grandmother.

It’s an indescribable experience watching your baby have a baby and coming to the realization that your life has just expanded by a generation—that a part of you will live on to see the 2100s. What kind of world will my granddaughter inherit? How will she make sense of a grandmother who grew up without cell phones, streaming, and car backup cameras.

When I heard Anna was in labor, I drove in the wee hours of the morning as fast as I could to reach Kansas. I chased the sunrise, literally running like a prison escapee in and out of rest stops for bathroom breaks. I wanted so much to get there for the labor but at least was able to arrive shortly after the birth.

Again, the word is indescribable.

It’s astonishing how quickly we forget those first few days of a newborn’s life—the sleepless nights, the feeding uncertainties, the information overload—and equally stunning how it all comes rushing back. As I tried to help my daughter navigate feedings, in the blink of an eye I was a 30-year-old new mother with no idea how to care for the bundle in my arms. I recall so distinctly baby Anna looking up at me with piercing dark eyes and a furrowed brow as if to say, “What now?”

Indeed, so much of caring for an infant seems to boil down to what now? and its companion phrase, who knows?

Undoubtedly, mothering a mother has to be the greatest privilege of my life and one of the most precious mother-daughter experiences I’ve shared with Anna. Because finally, you see, we are on the same page. She understands what it’s like to love someone absolutely and unconditionally, to think of your baby as a fifth limb, and to feel utterly incompetent at all times. Welcome to the next 30 years of your life, Anna.

Through Anna, I relived all those parts of young womanhood that I thought I had grown past: not only the fatigue, but the lack of control, the inability to take one day at a time and feel confident about the future.

Ironically, a few days after my daughter gave birth, a childhood friend had a double mastectomy due to breast cancer. As I was helping my daughter explore new breastfeeding holds, my friend was documenting on social media her post op recovery and sending to a few friends pictures of her newly maimed chest. She is heroic, strong and faithful, and I have no doubt she will lead us all into our turns as wickedly funny old dames.

The juxtaposition of the new mother whose breasts are life-giving and the woman grieving loss of hers got me to thinking about the commonalities all women share. Periods, pap smears, pregnancy, stretch marks, breastfeeding, mammograms, workplace inequities, sexual harassments, body image issues: all of these come to us due to a couple of fleshy mounds that define our figures. All of these are the mother’s milk that binds us as women.

Isn’t it ironic that no woman—or at least no woman I’ve ever met—is completely happy with her chest? Your boobs are misshapen, or asymmetrical, too small or too big. What woman doesn’t rip off her bra the moment she enters the house in the evenings—and what girl doesn’t bear psychological scars from her first consultation with a bra fitting specialist.

At a cocktail party years ago, I witnessed a man and a woman having a friendly argument over whose lot in life is harder: male or female. She ended the conversation by saying, “Once a year we have to put our boobs on a cold metal plate, get them smashed and then pray for a few days until we get the results.”

She won the fight.

And yet, just as our breasts are an integral part of who we are as women, it’s in our DNA to nurture, to care for—regardless of whether we ever give birth. It’s how we are hot-wired, and it’s a privilege that transcends all the physical and emotional vicissitudes we survive as women. I tell my daughter that, as she stares back with sleepy eyes, and she nods. She knows. Only three weeks in and she knows being a woman is an awesome honor.

Part of what makes new motherhood difficult, I’m convinced, is the information saturation. Try this hold. No, this one. Swaddle. Don’t swaddle. Feed on demand. Feed when hungry. Get your baby on a schedule. Babies can’t be scheduled. On and on and on.

In the first few days of my granddaughter’s life, we—my daughter, son-in-law (who somehow inherently knew how to be a great father from the first moment of life, by the way), and I were watching for and documenting the baby’s wet and poopy diapers, to make sure she was getting enough to eat and her body was working as it should be. We were following a chart: this many wet diapers on day 1, this many on day 2, etc.

A few days in, we were concerned when a clinician pointed out to us that we were counting days wrong. It seems we were not counting the first day of life as day zero.

We all just looked at each other aghast. “Who ever knew there was a day zero?” Anna said. And then we laughed until we cried because all we really wanted to do was sleep.

Indeed, there are day zeros throughout our lives as women. The days our children are born. The days they learn to smile or walk. Day zero is the day our kids leave home as eager 18-year olds, with nary a backwards glance, and the day years later when they lay their head on your shoulder because they’ve realized they still need mothering.

Day zero is hearing a cancer diagnosis and knowing that you have to find a resolve you are not sure you have—a strength that all of your friends have called upon for years. Day zero comes when you lose a good friend and have to reshape your future without them. When you lose your last parent, that’s day zero of being the oldest person around the dinner table.

There will be lots of day zeros in our lives as women, sweet Anna. Lots of firsts and redos, incredible joys and heart-wrenching sorrows. Our breasts develop and grow, become life-giving and then in later years sag and cause angst as we dread the lumps that never come. Or the ones that do.

One week after the birth, in the early morning as I was leaving Kansas, an anemic yet full moon led my way out of the neighborhood. It’s day zero, it seemed to say to me: the dawn of a new era for my family and the need for a new type of mothering and grandmothering. Time to reset, recalibrate, and experience a whole new dimension of love.

Welcome to the world, Eleanor Grace. Blessings to you on all the day zeros ahead of you.

We will be with you.